A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes
How the BBC destroyed the last remaining copies of Doctor Who stories.
97 episodes of Doctor Who are lost from the BBC archive.
There are no copies of these episodes.
This means that there are 97 episodes of Doctor Who that you and I can’t watch.
This is worth unpacking. For starters, it’s a way of looking at the culture around television in the past and the stark differences we view media today. It’s also a tale of ingenuity and invention as various individuals have worked hard to reduce the number of missing episodes (and they have, successfully).
But it’s also bizarre. As I’m writing, there are 862 episodes of Doctor Who. This means 11.2% of those episodes are missing. That might not sound like a lot. So let’s try a thought experiment. Try imagining you are deleting…
- 22.5 episodes of The Office (US) (so, about a season)
- 26.4 episodes of Friends (just over a season)
- 79.4 episodes of The Simpsons (nearly two and a half seasons)
As more episodes of Doctor Who are made, that number decreases. I’m sure one day it’ll appear to be a nice, small 5%.
Never mind the percentage, though. It’s what is lost. Let’s continue with those thought experiments. That episode of The Office with Amy Adams. Lost. That episode of Friends with Ross calling out “Pivot! Pivot!”: That’s gone too. You remember that episode of Black Mirror where the Prime Minister had sex with a pig? You don’t. That’s a shame. Wish you could watch it but that’s gone too.
We have companion arrivals and departures missing. We have Hartnell’s last episode absent and Troughton’s first episode gone.
So let’s break this down and just work out why Doctor Who episodes went missing and what remains.
When I was 6 years old, I began watching ‘Doctor Who’. And I loved it.
When I was 9 years old, the ABC began repeating ‘Doctor Who’ from the start (this was in 2004, before the new series). I can recall, crystal clear, watching various stories on these broadcasts.
What I can also remember is having odd feelings that I’d been deceived somehow. See, there was a time when yesterday’s episode had the Doctor, Steven and Vicki heading off for new adventures… and when, I watched it that day, it was the Doctor, Steven and DODO (?!?!) having adventures. Clearly, I’d missed an important episode. But then it happened again: Steven had disappeared!
And then one day, after having finally witnessed Dodo leave and Ben and Polly join the First Doctor — after, having finally seen this changeover after having missed so many — I tuned in to see a completely brand new title sequence, new Doctor and TWO new companions!
As I got my crayons to write an angry letter to the ABC, my Mum explained to me about missing episodes. That the ABC weren’t involved in some deception: they actually didn’t have the episodes.
Why Are Episodes Missing?
The key thing to realise is that no-one considered the commercial opportunities of people owning copies of programs for domestic pleasure. Television was like theatre (Indeed, we’ve already seen that it was rehearsed and recorded in a more theatrical tradition at odds with the British film industry) and key part of theatre is that a show once performed cannot be seen again. There was no sense that VHS or DVD would eventuate, yet alone the bingeing culture allowed by streaming services. This was appointment television with no second chances.
This originates from television being live. Indeed, if a program was repeated, it wasn’t the original show but the actors and crew reuniting for a second performance. An example of this is the BBC’s 1954 production of Nineteen Eighty-Four. After a (controversial) and successful first showing, the cast reconvened to perform again. This production was telerecorded. Telerecording was essentially the program being recorded onto film as it was broadcast. The BBC would do this for preservation. It is this copy that exists in the BBC archive.
But preservation wasn’t the only thing the BBC was interested in. They recorded the first two episodes of 1953’s The Quatermass Experiment with the idea of selling the film prints to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This avenue offered a potential source of revenue for programs. However, the idea was abandoned after The Quatermass Experiment’s second episode. The picture quality was considered good enough, and one episode has an insect walking on the screen for a few minutes.
Things were to change though, and one of those things was the invention of videotape. Videotape meant that programs could be recorded and then broadcast without needing to be live. This was how Doctor Who was recorded, allowing the production team to be a few episodes in advance of their broadcast.
Videotape was expensive though. While recording in studio allowed certain freedoms (such as the opportunity to take breaks) videotape’s main asset was that it could be re-used. Once a tape had had its contents broadcast, the tape could be wiped and used to record another program.
Repeats were rare, archive space was limited, so the shelf-life of these programs was always going to be short. Thus, the show on the tape was not as important as the actual physical tape.
This was the fate of Doctor Who’s episodes. Episodes, once broadcast, would have an appointment with an electromagnetic eraser. It wasn’t only Doctor Who, of course. Many other programs were also wiped (Early episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus exist because Terry Jones made personal copies)
This was early 2004 and in the same year, the ‘Lost in Time’ boxset was released. This was a collection of “orphan” episodes (surviving episodes of stories were over 50% of material was lost). I had saved my pocket money for what seemed like years, but I bought it for $50.
We didn’t even have a DVD player. I would stare at those discs and the pictures on the back, imagining what the stories were like. When we finally got a DVD player, we only had ‘Lost in Time’ and about 5 other DVDs. I would watch and rewatch these episodes. I would watch on a loop surviving footage, and 8mm clips.
By chance, I found a collection of Target novels. I didn’t know these existed. One was ‘The Tenth Planet’. I read this excitedly, knowing that I would never see this (My sister found this annoying. How could I keep banging on about a story that didn’t exist when I was clearly holding it by hand?!)
The missing episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ are what pushed me from enjoying ‘Doctor Who’ to being a student of it.
What Does Survive?
If the original videotapes were wiped then how is it possible to see any black and white episode of Doctor Who?
Technology had improved since the BBC tried recording The Quatermass Experiment for Canada. The BBC used loyalties to Britain to sell its programs to commonwealth countries with majority of programs being sold to Australia (which was useful, as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation could pay the larger fees covering royalties to the actors, being less-rich countries could purchase episodes for a lower fee).
These were film prints, as film was inexpensive and universal. As such copies of every episode from Doctor Who’s first six seasons were made (with the exception of the 1965 Christmas special which was never offered aboard and thus never copied. Therefore, ‘The Feast of Steven’ is the ultimate missing episode).
The BBC did this with a lot of its programming: Dad’s Army, Hancock’s Half Hour, Not Only… But Also… (with some episodes starring John Lennon), and ’Til Death Do us Part being some examples. With master tapes being erased, what survives are these film copies made for international sale.
Once countries had bought copies of programs, they had to either:
- Send them to the next country that bought them
- Return them to the BBC
- Destroy the film
While returning them to the BBC sounded like a safe bet, it wasn’t. BBC Enterprises, the then-commercial arm of the BBC, was interested in the revenue prospects of episodes. With the advent of colour television meaning the demand for colour programs, BBC Enterprises themselves began destroying black-and-white material. And Doctor Who’s first six seasons were black-and-white material.
However, by 1978, a concerted effort to recover material and keep an archive was underway. Over the years, overseas broadcasters have returned film prints. A few prints ended up in the hands of private collectors who have returned the episode to the BBC. This has resulted in the return of several Doctor Who stories.
Episodes have returned in recent years in dribs and drabs. An episode of The Crusade was returned in 1999. An episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan was discovered in 2001. Nearly 10 years later in 2011, two more episodes were found. By this time, 106 episodes were missing.
The most recent find was in 2013, when 9 Patrick Troughton episodes were discovered. Now, the number is 97.
It’s been nearly 10 years, so maybe a few will be discovered soon? It’s unlikely. Film matter deteriorates, and it’s been nearly sixty years. So, if you know someone who collects film prints, let me know. Who knows, maybe they’re sitting on a lost classic…
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